Review of A Christmas Carol (1984) by Calum B — 11 Dec 2012

As is typical with every Christmas holidays, you'd expect to see a different screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Understandably, I've seen plenty of versions of "A Christmas Carol" throughout my lifetime ("The Muppet Christmas Carol" being a close favorite of mine), all of them trying to be as accurate and faithful to the book as possible. Recently, I have seen this one, and it's got to be the most accurate version that I've seen in ages (a close second being the CGI version with Jim Carrey). Almost everything, from beginning to end, sounds like it's coming right out of the original novel. A grade A+ effort.

With all accuracy to the novel aside, I do have to say a word about George C. Scott's portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge. In a sense, I consider his portrayal of the old miser to be somewhat... unique. I know at times he seems like he's having too much fun with the whole thing and lacks some of the emotional depth that you'd expect to see in the character, but the way he delivers his lines is fairly natural and makes it seem like he's giving it all he's got. On another note, he takes some things in the story which are unintentionally funny and turns them into things that sound like they're supposed to be funny, which works in some parts of the story and some not too well in some parts. Of course, in comparison to the accuracy of the story, I give George C. Scott's portrayal of Scrooge an A for a fairly good, if not perfect, effort.

In conclusion, this is one adaptation of the Charles Dickens Christmas classic that I recommend checking out. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give an 8, of course.